When her shot wasn’t falling, Misericordia’s Rachel Carmody found other ways to be effective.

The Western Wayne graduate made just 1 of her first 11 shots, but down the stretch, she was money, grabbing three rebounds, blocking a shot and hitting two important fourth-quarter shots to help the Cougars rally for a 54-42 win at Marywood in Wednesday’s nonconference game.

“What we focus on is our defense,” said Carmody, who contributed 11 boards to a school-record 64-rebound effort. “If you’re not doing it on the offensive end, you really want to focus on your defense, get that stop back.

“Overall, it’s our defense that really won us the game tonight.”

That’s because after Dunmore product Erika Bistran hit a 3, part of an 11-point night, the Pacers (1-5) missed 17 of their last 18 shots and committed seven turnovers over the last 14:56 as the Cougars closed on a 24-3 run.

“In the second half, we shut down effort-wise,” Marywood coach Tara

Macciocco said. “I thought we played with a lot of energy in the first half and we came out the second 20 minutes and we were flat.

“And we have a tendency, when we are not making shots, we go down to the other end and take breaks on defense. We can’t take breaks on defense.”

In one possession early in the third quarter, Misericordia (2-4) had five offensive rebounds before going to the foul line to hit a pair of free throws.

The Cougars held a 64-37 edge on the boards, 25 of those at the offensive end.

“It’s just effort,” Macciocco said. “Size-wise, we’ve played teams bigger than them and we’ve battled them tougher than we battled today. I know they had 15 offensive rebounds in the first half, and I thought coming back out after talking about it and making an adjustment, we got flatfooted.”

Paige Wampole led a balanced attack with 10 points and a team-high 12 rebounds as Misericordia overcame a 20-for-73 effort from the floor.

“I think we did something we asked them to do all year,” Misericordia coach Jason Rhine said. “Our points have been coming. We’ve been pushing the ball well this year, but we’re not getting the stops we need.

“We put in a new reference today. Three stops in a row, we call it a kill. They really bought into that, and once we got that first kill, it was our second kill, our third kill and the number speak for themselves. They scored two points in the fourth quarter, 11 in the whole second half.”

Marywood led by nine at halftime, 31-22. Holy Cross grad Gab Giordano scored 14 of her 19, and Bistran contributed six, the pair combining for back-to-back 3s in the final 31 seconds, including Giordano’s 22-footer at the buzzer.

“I sat down with coach, I’ve been struggling in the first few games of the season,” Giordano said. “She told me to just go out there and have fun, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

“I think coming out after halftime, we didn’t match their intensity, and we let them get way too many offensive rebounds, too many second chances. That’s when the shift kind of happened.”

It also saw the Cougars switch between face-guarding shooters, playing some matchup zone and trapping at other times.

That helped them limit Giordano to just five points in the second half, including a layup with 1:49 left that snapped a 13-minute dry spell between baskets.

“She had a lot of fire, and that’s what she does,” Carmody said of Giordano, a former AAU teammate. “She gets hot, she stays hot. We had to shut her down and we did.”

And Carmody helped the Cougars battle back to tie the game at 40 with just under seven minutes left, then hit a 15-footer with 1:24 left to make it 52-42.

“I think those are big, to put us up by double digits, so we can get back to the other end and get another stop and try to score,” Carmody said.

After Bistran’s 3 with 4:56 left in the third, Marywood didn’t hit another shot beyond the arc, missing its final seven.

“They went to a zone defense in the second half and we got stagnant, but I don’t think that was it,” Macciocco said. “I just think we stopped attacking basket and playing with the energy level we needed.”

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